Thoughts on nature, meditation and cabin life

September 2012

September 17, 2012

Last week, I went for a walk around Meeker Park. Underneath my feet, the ground was crunchy and everything looked bedraggled, tired, as if it had given up in this summer of not enough rain and too hot temperatures.

The next morning, I awoke to cloudy skies, and, as I sat down for my breakfast, I noticed clouds moving in from the east, swiftly erasing the hillside across the way and moving up the valley, so I soon lost the Twin Sisters Peaks. All around me, the tall pines were enshrouded in gray mist. Fog is such a rarity here that I wanted to walk outside, see what everything looked like, felt like in this new landscape, without sun, everything partially obscured. Quiet, moist, even the birds seemed hushed, as if in awe of this day.

All day it rained on and off, a slow, soft rain that seemed like a blessing, like grace itself descending from the sky. But that night, laying in bed, I could hear the faucets turn on, and the rain became harder. All I could think about was the gratitude of the trees—the aspens and pines that I have been trying to water all summer long with rain from the rain barrel, and feeling I was barely making a dent. Now I could imagine the rain soaking down to their roots and then being pulled upward to feed those branches where weeks ago the pine needles started turning reddish brown and the aspen leaves had started to crinkle up.

All summer I’ve been prepared for fires, had mentally made a list of what I needed to do if I had to flee my cabin. But I wasn’t prepared for rain, so had to think about what I was supposed to do. Was there some danger I needed to prepare myself for? Would the creeks flood? Was the house in any danger?

Everything was fine, better than fine. Although I couldn’t see Mount Meeker, swaddled in clouds, undoubtedly there was new snow. The next day was cloudy, the clouds still low, with a slight drizzle. I wanted more, wanted days of rain to pelt the earth, but I knew I had to feel gratitude for what I had.

September 10, 2012

At the cabin this week, something felt very different. It’s
always quiet up there (except for the occasional construction project or
chainsawing of trees) but the silence seemed different this time, almost an
emptiness. I went for a walk with my neighbor that afternoon, and she felt it
too. With Labor Day past, all the summer people have left, boarded up their
cabins until next summer. Meeker Lodge, the historic building on the main road,
has shuttered its doors and windows and closed its small grocery store, so the
parking lot that was full all summer is empty, the lot closed off with boards
at each entrance.

It felt like an absence of energy, that with all the people
gone, all their energy has disappeared with them. I have new neighbors at the
Bill Waite cabin next door, who upon their arrival several weeks ago, immediately took to emptying
the cabin, ripping out the inside boards, cleaning everything like good
energetic Nebraskans. I hardly minded the noise, and now that they have all
gone back to Nebraska, I miss the activity.

Mysteriously, all the ground squirrels have disappeared,
several weeks earlier than usual. And I only saw one chipmunk. So have the
squirrels’ food supply been used up, and they thought they might as well go
into hibernation? Or did some predator find their hiding spot, some very
skillful predator?

The big question for me has always been: how does one endure
knowing everything will end? Now, with all the aspen trees starting to change,
most of the animals that kept me amused all summer gone, change is written in
the wind. One of the most beautiful sounds in the world to me is the soft
chiming of the breezes through the aspen leaves and one that has comforted me
in this summer of so many difficulties. But soon the aspens will be stripped of
their leaves, the green meadows turn brown, the creeks muffled in snow. It will
be a new landscape, one more severe, with much of the lush and soft beauty
gone.

The Buddhists say there’s a beauty and calmness in accepting
every moment, in not clinging to what will slip out of your hands like water. I
understand that and most of the time I feel the intensity, can experience the
light of day, the songs of the birds. What I haven’t been able to do is figure
out how to live with all the sadness from losing what I love.